Sunday, November 20, 2011

Get Sirius...

Tonight's test was all about not having to calibrate. Due to location I couldn't actually see Polaris, I just pointed north and guessed. Tracking? Leave that to the math. First shot was just to pick out the brightest thing in the sky and see how close I was. Note that these are untouched single frames, no processing at all:

(30 second exposure @ 300mm)

(Another 30 second exposure)

This image is a reminder to me about why it's important to go where there are dark skies. This is 180 seconds (to take some longer exposures and see what I could get). Perfect tracking, can even start to see some of the milky way in there. However the local light pollution is what's really limiting me from having some fun. I tried a couple of 5 and 10 minute shots just to see if I was staying accurate, but they were completely blown out with the orange glow. They still were useful though, I could tell the only error was in alignment (which was surprisingly low considering the careless approach)